Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Constructor: Gary J. Whitehead

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "AMEN to THAT!" — Word ladder going from AMEN to THAT, a literal representation of the colloquial phase "AMEN to THAT," which is referred to in the central answers: "I HEAR YA!" (36A: "1-Across [AMEN] to 63-Across [THAT]")

Word of the Day: AEDES (33D: Dreaded mosquito) —

Aedes is a genus of mosquito originally found in tropical and subtropical zones, but has spread by human activity to all continents excluding Antarctica. Several of the species transmit important human diseases and one species, Aedes albopictus, is the most invasive mosquito in the world. The name comes from the Ancient Greekaēdēs, meaning "unpleasant" or "odious", so called because of the diseases this type of mosquito transmits, including dengue fever and yellow fever. In Polynesia, the species Aedes polynesiensis is responsible for the transmission of human lymphatic filariasis including species of Brugia as well as others. Some species of Aedes (e.g. the Asian tiger mosquito) have only recently been introduced to the US. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a good example of a cute idea gone horribly awry. Constructors notice colloquial phrases all the time—pay attention to the language as people use it, and new and interesting crossword themes will reveal themselves to you. It's true. So today we start with the phrase "AMEN to THAT!" — sassy, fresh, *and* (if you look hard enough) kind of daring you to turn it into a word ladder. The question is: should you? The answer: maybe. Maybe not.

So a word ladder is a chain of words where each successive word has one letter changed until the original word arrives at a completely different, but somehow related, word. I've seen "From SOUP to NUTS" illustrated this way in a word ladder puzzle. Today, we go AMEN to THAT (with the nice tie-it-all-together answer in the middle). The problem ... well, the first, minor problem is my own—I think word ladders are dull, and kind of played out. Old hat. As theme answers, the individual steps on the ladder are hard to get excited about ("Oh look ... DEES! That's ... something!"). So, though there are many steps on this ladder, and the concept of the ladder is interesting, we start off in dullsville, at least for me.

The much bigger problem for me, today, is how patently subpar the fill is. As my wife can tell you, I was audibly groaning from the outset. From the variant APPAL at 1D (1D: Horrify: Var.) to nearby ELSA'S (crosswordese of a very high order) (3D: "___ Dream" ("Lohengrin" aria)) to the quintessential crosswordese ERSE (7D: Gaelic tongue) — all within two inches of each other — the grid is just rough. Rough. Awkward plurals right next to each other (ENES, NONS), a crosswordese convention in the western section, and then ... whatever is happening in the east (train wreck). SODDY? Come on. And crossing AEDES!?!? What the hell? No idea what USIA is (60A: Public diplomacy broadcast org. until 1999) (looking up ... United States Information Agency). Then there's just the general dullness of stuff like ASSESS and ENROLLEE and PAYER. No idea who says SOCKEROO, but at least that answer is kind of lively. POSTSEASON and ULTRASOUND (56A: Ob/gyn's image) are admirably solid (and POSTSEASON is timely, footballwise). But overall, the pervasive weakness of the fill made the experience much less than enjoyable.

The Ladder:

AMEN

OMEN

OVEN

EVEN

EVES

EYES

DYES (41A: Does some batiking)

DEES

TEES

TEAS

TEAT

THAT

Bullets:

49D: Ephesus' region (IONIA) — very crossword common because of its voweliness.

52D: "Our Gang" pooch (PETE) — I thought it was PETEY—and it was; just not formally, I guess.

2D: Simpleton in "Archie" comics (MOOSE) — ashamed I didn't get this straight off. Daughter reads nearly every "Archie" comic there is. And yet with the "M" in place, I could think only of MIDGE (MOOSE's girlfriend).

This puzzle was like those dumb-assed Family Circus cartoons, where Billy & Barfy come home from school, traipsing all over the place, getting nowhere fast. AMEN/TMEN/THEN/THAN/THAT. If you've got to do a word ladder of four letter words, there you go. Is this a hidden AA theme, where there are 12 steps when 5 would do?

I am so glad Rex ripped this puzzle a new one.This felt tired and clunky and out of date, kidna like an old whitehead wrote it. I said it last week and I will say it again, Monday Tuesday puzzles should be first and foremost for the new solvers! This is how you get new blood. I printed out a stack of these for the my coffee shop friends tomorrow and I have to warn them its another toughie.Geez Will you are making it hard to peddle the puzzle to newbies. A while back someone said that Will did not have enough early week puzzles to choose from because constructors were not interested in making them. I have an idea , why dont you pay some real cackadoodie money to the dang constructors! They could double the payment and still be raping them blind.Ok rant off. sorry

I am sad to say I concur with Rex 100%. This one felt like it just got away from the constructor.

I have never been a fan of word ladders — I'm not saying they can't be made fresh or interesting, but it's hard to see how. And here, there's such a weird disconnect in difficulty between the theme and the fill. I got the theme after two slots, and roared through the rest of the theme ladder. I then dragged my feet the rest of the way through the horrible fill.

SODDY may be a word, but I'm doubtful. But the really unforgivable entry here is GO-CART. Nobody spells it that way. Google it. It's GO-KART. If you type in GO-CART, not only does it ask if you meant GO-KART, it still returns mostly GO-KART results _anyway_. Weakest entry I've seen in a NYT grid in some time.

So it all felt very unbalanced, with a too-easy theme caused by a too-easy-to-see ladder, mixed with too-hard fill that was hard from being intolerably obscure, not from being interesting or well-clues.

This puzzle was a mess, and I guess the constructor just couldn't make himself walk away from a good idea that just wasnt't clicking. My least favorite puzzle in many weeks.

Don't forget EWE crossing EWER in the west. That's just LAZY grid design, if'n you ask me. Whenever I construct my puzzles, I obsessively check to see if there are any repeat words. Some repeats you can let go if the design is open and ambitious enough, but seriously, the entire word of EWE is contained in EWER, they cross each other, and it's in a 3x4 section that could be easily modified. Just change PAW to PAD and you get EWE crossing EDER, a river in Germany; or change EWE to SWE for the abbreviation for Sweden. Problem solved.

yes, wonderful idea that was a bit SODDY all around...but rather than pile on, (altho what about NODAT!?!)I will make the sad side note that 38A ZSA in addition to having one of her Zsa's cut off, has also just had a leg amputated :(

@Artlvr, I had a side SPLIT when I read your post. Sometimes the mistakes are the most fun. My only groan was GOO- melted chocolate is ganache and delicious, GOO seems more disgusting- melted rubber, e.g.

I liked the theme. It worked; it had solving power. I'm sorta new to Xwords, so maybe I haven't burned out on word ladders yet. But Rex seems too hard on them. Would you rather have *no* theme? This one had a very cute double entendre to go with it!

A tacit agreement, to me, is one that is confirmed by inaction, not one that is unvoiced. I have seen my kids proceed to NOD AT some suggestion with such enthusiasm that it would be impossible to label their agreement as "tacit". Silent agreement, yes. But that's different, and what the clue should have been.

like word ladders. probably because they remind me of a simpler time (like doing word puzzles when i was a tween, before there was even the word tween. life was all windshield then. no rearview. also really liked the reveal here.

can't muster any hate for the iffy words. they just didn't bug me. thought the WOTD bug was kind of tricky. had never heard of it.

Wow - tough room. I just got caught up and did Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday all in a row. I was behind thanks to the MIT Mystery Hunt, which was a blast (and my team won, so now we get to write next year's hunt). Quick write-up at my site (and a video of the show my band did on 1/12 right below):patrickblindauer.com/read.html

Agree with the masses here - not a particularly challenging or exciting puzzle. Snore-fest.That said, there was one bright spot for me - the cluing of "Moose."Was a bit nostalgic thinking of all those Archie comic books I read growing up! :-)Happy Tuesday!Greg

I did not hate it the way that many here did. It was okay, though heavy in crosswordese. And I don't mind word ladders, though this one did seem labored. I had other problems, though. Stupid ones.

My trouble was the NE. I am not a sports fan and so had ____SEASON for the longest time and could not come up with POST. Haven't read Archie for 30 years and forgot all about MOOSE. My plow horse was SlOw, my simpletons were NInnIeS, and even though I like opera, I can't do Wagner. HTG three times to fill in the NW.

Well, I liked the word ladder and the theme answer at 36A. But I agree with most everyone on the dodginess of some of the fill and clues. AEDES is fine, but not really a Tuesday word. SODDY is just lamentable -- could have been clued as the well-known (to me anyway!) colleague of Ernest Rutherford who helped establish the existence of isotopes.

What everybody said. Didn't like it any better than the rest of you. An as yet unvoiced complaint: EWERs, I thought, were used for wash water on nightstands a hundred years ago. If for drinking water, surely someone will correct this.

Most fun in this puzzle: having explained to non-puzzle wife on Sunday the irksome "half a [something]" clue (TSE, CAN, ZSA), using ZSA as an example since her unfortunate situation was in the news, then having it come up so soon after. Kind of a malapop by proxy.

@HazelI liked your windshield/rear window distinction and would like to apply it to crossword puzzles. When I am solving the puzzle that is the windshield. Commenting on it is the rear window.

In windshield mode crosswordese is like the bugs that sometimes land there. Unless there is some biblical plague going on the bugs really don't spoil the view that much. I can still see the theme through them and enjoy it. In rear window mode you are outside the car looking back at the mess.

So the flaws mentioned so far did not really bother me. The puzzle took me longer than usual for a Tuesday and it was fun figuring out the revealer.

I remember reading a Richard Bach book a long time ago about a pilot so skilled that his windshield never had bugs on it. Constructors like Patrick Berry, Frank Longo, Mike Shenk, Peter Gordon, BEQ, etc. are like that pilot.

Seems like constructor and editor became so wrapped up in the theme, they didn't waste a lot of time on the fill.

A little example to help perk it up, instead of the super boring "Poor grades", give the early weekers a little more respect with something like "Sandra and Ruby", then, at least, ditch AEDES and SODDY.

•walker: an enclosing framework on casters or wheels; helps babies learn to walk •handcart: wheeled vehicle that can be pushed by a person; may have one or two or four wheels; "he used a handcart to carry the rocks away"; "their pushcart was piled high with groceries" •baby buggy: a small vehicle with four wheels in which a baby or child is pushed aroundwordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Definitions of GO-KART on the Web:

•a small low motor vehicle with four wheels and an open framework; used for racingwordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

•Kart racing or karting is a variant of open-wheel motor sport with small, open, four-wheeled vehicles called karts, go-karts, or gearbox/shifter karts depending on the design. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart

I did not like this one bit. For me the path of most resistance. Resisted SODDY (this can't be right), GOCART (should be a K), EWER crossing EWE (isn't there a rule against this?) and more. Never saw the word ladder and hated the TEES, DEES, TEAS AND TEAT. ENROLLEE and PAYER seem forced. I've seldom had this negative reaction to a puzzle. Wah! I want a different one.

On a happier note, in a follow up to last week's BANANA CAKE today I am making yellow cake with fudge frosting for tomorrow's music lunch, my weekly volunteer task. Take care all.

*grumble* My least favorite crossword filler of all time? EPEE. As has been pointed out, it's poorly clued ... fencing is the sport, whereas epee is one of three weapons. They do have different rules, and one generally says "I fence epee (or foil, or sabre)", but still, that doesn't exactly make them interchangeable.

Why can't constructors pick on FOILists for a while? It still has four letters ... it's those damn double Es, I guess.

I didn't hate the word ladder and theme. The bad of the grid, however, is really really bad.

@Rex. Are you going to post any kind of accounting for your pledge/donation week? How much do you need to keep the blog up for a year? How much did you raise? Do you need any more financial support? If you raised a surplus, what will you do with it?

I was struck most by how long I took to get any answers--on a Tuesday! Though surprising, I was prepared to call this a good thing, since the easy ones are hardly worth the effort lots of times.

I didn't love everything, but wasn't hating, either, till I got to the last square. I stared at the SODDY/AEDES cross until I decided I just did not care and came to see what Rex had. Didn't help that I convinced myself "key" could be InLET. With the S in place, I might have tried SODDY, but I still would have Hated It. Soddy, no love today.

Really too bad to have to endure what seemed to be every overused bit of crosswordese for the payoff.I hear ya tied to Amen to that worked just fine but the rest? Yawn.Printing the puzzle across the fold is inexcusable.I agree with almost everyone.No matter which table you use a ewer is for washing.Soddy and Go-Kart have been covered well enough.@ Tobias Duncan, I like your phrase "old whitehead." I usually say "bluehair" but that's just for old ladies.Now off to read about that border collie in the science section.

If you don’t mind a word ladder, then this puzzle ain’t all that bad, especially for a Tuesday. There are some fresh words as well as some quirky ones.

AS A WHOLE is an extra because you need to look at the whole puzzle for the theme.

POST SEASON is timely, if nothing else.

LESIONS conjures up some unpleasantness.

COAL BIN is a great misdirection for GAS TANK.

ULTRA SOUND conjures up some other kind of image.

I don’t know KNAVERY but it sounds like medieval CHILVARY in reverse.

What about ODISTS and ODESSA making for an OD couple?

And you gotta love NIT WITS! I suspect that one’s for the nitpickers.

If there is any real flaw it is in the theme itself. Is AMEN to THAT the same as I HEAR YA? I’m not sure. AMEN to THAT suggests you agree with something said but I HEAR YA suggests you hear something but do not necessarily agree with it, IMO. But the theme shows some original thought and deserves some credit for that, especially for a Tuesday....

If you don’t mind a word ladder, then this puzzle ain’t all that bad, especially for a Tuesday. There are some fresh words as well as some quirky ones.

AS A WHOLE is an extra because you need to look at the whole puzzle for the theme.

POST SEASON is timely, if nothing else.

LESIONS conjures up some unpleasantness.

COAL BIN is a great misdirection for GAS TANK.

ULTRA SOUND conjures up some other kind of image.

I don’t know KNAVERY but it sounds like medieval CHILVARY in reverse.

What about ODISTS and ODESSA making for an OD couple?

And you gotta love NIT WITS! I suspect that one’s for the nitpickers.

If there is any real flaw it is in the theme itself. Is AMEN to THAT the same as I HEAR YA? I’m not sure. AMEN to THAT suggests you agree with something said but I HEAR YA suggests you hear something but do not necessarily agree with it, IMO. But the theme shows some original thought and deserves some credit for that, especially for a Tuesday....

Have confirmed with the Times that the printing of this morning's puzzle over top of the fold was a human error and not a design change. Puzzle will remain in the corner. Life is good again, at least for we MetroNorth solvers.

1. AMEN to THAT = IHEARYA. Cute idea.2. Puz takes its own sweet soddy time gettin' from AMEN to THAT. Just go AMEN-TMEN-THEN-THAN-THAT. Done and done.3. Puz does go from DEES to THAT in a prompt manner. But DEES in down on line 11, already.4. WUrd of the day = UltrasoUnd. Primo!5. Actually, pretty fresh vocab, for a TuesPuz. So enjoyed the challenge of amen, er,...that.

Maybe the time has come to add some new pazzazz to the old word ladder scheme. This crowd is definitely ready for it. How about, say, goin' from a short word to a real long one, addin' one letter at time? Sorta like words on Viagra. Gotta be some gold there to mine. You betcha.

My favorite word ladder, a long time ago, actually looked like a staircase. I got the theme immediately, how not, with amen, omen and oven. Actually filled most of the starred clue answers in right away.

Leaving aside the puzzle itself, I object to its placement across the fold in today's paper. I urge everyone to write the Times, requesting that the puzzle be placed either above or below the fold, not astraddle.

Re SHOD - Of all the classifications of horses, plow horses are the least likely to be SHOD outside of yearlings, retireees or lawn ornaments. Shoes are an unnecessary expense and provide no additional utility to plow horses. ANY other classification, e.g. carriage horses, show horses, race horses, etc would work.

I did my puzzle in the bathtub, after printing it out of course, and it got SOggY. Seemed to take a very long time for a Tuesday. First thing I did was circle all the asterisks, then promptly forgot about them until the grid was complete. Only then did I see the word ladder.

Agree with some of the carps, but ASAWHOLE it was clever. Liked POSTSEASON, NITWITS, COALBIN, LESIONS, ULTRASOUND, and my birthstone, EMERALDS.

Now I'm sort of intrigued and gonna take a deep breath and look at what was odd about the puzzle from a different point of view, bec it is amazing how much folks didn't like it...Poor Gary! I wonder if any of the feedback above will be constructive or if it's all been SO much it will just be ignored.Bec really, the idea was very nice.

JaxinLAI had SLOW NINNIES too!!! (I didn't know ELSA'S Dream so tried ELiA going for POINT something instead of POSTSEASON). It left me with "ews" for grid stats that could be anything as far as I was concerned! But as EWE/crossed with EWER, which I already found suspect, I thought EWS couldn't be right.

Kept trying to figure out how some variation of LADDER was going to fit into the IHEARYA space (esp bec I had KNAVish and didn't know AEDES, and was reluctant not only about SODDY but even ISLET!)

Didn't any of the sports folks like DEREK over POSTSEASON over TDS?Altho the APPAL/LESIONS cross left a strange aftertaste. Or maybe it was the whole WHOLE/HOLE, EWE/EWER, NODAT/ATIT, EPEE/ENROLLEE with two Ls for ENROLLEE but one L for APPAL.

EVen tho GOCART was a bit off, at least it wasn't PAYEE. (I tried SPORT for PAYEE, how wrong was that?)And dying for some Scrabbly-ness I put in COALBox. So now I'm thinking maybe part of my dislike was all the myriad mistakes I made initially even tho the theme was apparent from the second word.This is my lame attempt to look at the puzzle a la Foodie and muse about mistakes, expectations, things that were off vs actually off in trying to figure out what went so wrong with this one in everyone's eyes...But no excuse for being printed "on the fold", tho at least that can't be pinned on the puzzle!!!

@jesser my captcha is "mallays", is that a less fancy spelling of "malaise"? Or would there only be one L? ;)

One cluing note: I can see EPEE being clued as a sport, since it is its own event at the Olympics. However, it would have better been clued as an event, since it's a subset of a greater sport, much like the 100 m dash is an event, not a sport (track being the sport).

Put in Tim for 39 across(is he in the well?) so that was my favorite wrong answer.Theme answers were so randomly placed that the ladder was hard to climb also did not finish aedes islet soddy not getable for me actually thought for awhile that the theme was crappy fill

Boy, the pile of irritants of this puzzle just gets bigger as the day goes on. @Arthur above is right about plow horses NOT being shod.I think @nanpilla could second that.I do feel sorry for the constructor today.

I did not even realize there was a word ladder until I got to the blog. Got stuck on the SE section. It had SOCKEROO (what the hell is that?) crossing COREA, USIA and IONEA. I refuse to memorize these obscure trivia that appear only in puzzles. COAL BIN was a nice misdirection though.This was definitely a difficult puzzle for a Tuesday. And not very enjoyable. Agree with REX comments.

I hate to interrupt a good feeding frenzy, but the RHUD (the primary dictionary reference for the NYT crossword) lists the little racing vehicle under "kart." The kart entry lists two synonyms, "go-cart" and "go-kart," in that order.

I think that you guys are being too hard. I know "12 steps" has been taken over by AA but that's a long damned ladder and the center"I hear ya" ties it together.I'm giving Gary a pass on this one.Tuesdays are more awkward than not and we have been appreciating the added level of difficulty lately, right?OK, the fill was Very iffy but let's put our crabby pants back in the closet before some troll accuses this gang of being a bunch of toadies.

I also object strongly to the spelling of GOCART. Having the correctly spelled K instead of the incorrect C was my only wrong answer in the grid. SOKKEROO and SOCKEROO were equally nonsensical to me. Annoying.

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)

At 90 I qualify as a whitehead.My opinion of this puzzle is not fit to print-- stupid clues to more stupid answers. I'm weary of comics and pop music use. Where is Eugene Maleska when WE need him with his classics clues to classic answers? Gone but NOT forgotten by my generation!

I know that no one will probably even see this comment since I'm in the 5-week delayed alternate universe of syndication, but I just have to say, I read this blog almost every day when I'm done with the puzzle, and I've never actually commented, but soddy was such a terrible answer, I just couldn't let it pass without expressing it to someone, somewhere. I love golf. I play golf. And I would NEVER describe a green as soddy. And unfortunately, as everyone else has already mentioned, this is just the worst example of many bad, bad clues and answers.

Themes usually elude me until the very end (or often, until I come here) but I detected the word ladder after AMEN and OMEN so I filled in the rest of the starred clues (I hesitated at TEAT, but only for a second) and that made the central answer IHEARYA appear with only a couple of crosses - so that was fun. And I liked ULTRASOUND as the Ob/gyn's image, too. The syndicated puz was not printed on the fold in my paper, so no complaint there. ASAWHOLE (I) ASSESS it as OK but with some S(h)ODDY fill.

(Feb’11) If Mr. Whitehead is still listening across the weeks I thought I would comment that I liked his puzzle and enjoyed the word game (ladder) within the puzzle plus the ‘call and response’ of AMEN to THAT and IHEARYA. Loved EMERALDS (my favorite gem) and also COALBIN for ‘fuel container’. Didn’t like – nor have I ever even heard of – SOCKEROO & had to look up AEDES.